We are still hard at work every day.
Most of December was spent on finalizing the scope for the update, making a huge 67 page long design document. Now that we are finally working with a concrete plan, the development velocity in January has been amazing.
I also cut back on some leisure activities and have been no-lifing development more again. It's been fun so far and after last year, which was more of a recovery year, I feel empowered and productive.
I plan to release a more extensive blog post at the end of March, hopefully including a lot of screenshots, gifs and general teasers. Maybe even a good estimation for the update (beta) launch.
If you aren't 100% in the loop, basically, what was planned to just be a big content update, has slowly mutated into a complete rewrite of the entire game, including foundational technical changes and preparations for localization, mid run saving, better performance, better visual clarity, new indicators, new cool items and even data driven modding capabilities.
(Shoutouts to Hytale, seeing their modding system reinforced that my new data driven approach of development is going to be the correct way forward. It's funny to see that I've been working on a not quite as extensive but similar structure as they have.)
I feel like this is a very very rare occasion in this industry. No publisher would ever go through with an "update" like this. Especially because it's going to be free.
I never expected for my skill level to grow so much that I will have to do a complete rewrite to achieve everything I want with the game. In the end, I stand with my decision to go down this path.
I deem Tiny Rogues a project worthy to receive this love and dedication.
Tiny Rogues won't fall victim to the "forever early access" curse.
A giant update will 100% happen this year.
Please excuse the long wait. I thank you for your patience.
Cheers,
RubyDev